Military test drone crashed near Houston last fall

A prototype military test drone crashed into a SWAT team’s armored vehicle last fall during a test flight, according to an official at Spring-based Vanguard Defense Industries, which developed the drone.

The drone crashed during a test flight at Vanguard’s flight test and training facility in Conroe in September 2011 after the operator “observed a vibration in the aircraft and elected to conduct an emergency landing,” said Vanguard CEO Michael Buscher.

The operator was trying to the land the drone when its rotors clipped a Montgomery County Sheriff’s SWAT vehicle. Sheriff’s officials were on hand photograph the test drone.

The SWAT vehicle sustained minor damage, while damage to the drone was confined to the rotors, Buscher said.

MCSO recently used federal homeland security grant money to purchase a $300,000 police drone from Vanguard, and is moving forward with its separate program. The crash will not impact the Montgomery County SO’s drone program, a sheriff’s spokesman said.

“They (Vanguard) are continuing to develop their particular aircraft, and they’re experimenting, I assume, with various types of engines,” said Chief Deputy Randy McDaniel. “It (drone) was not ours. Ours has been flying perfectly, and I’m not concerned in the least.”

The test drone was powered by a turbine engine designed for military use only, while Montgomery County’s Shadow Hawk drone is piston-driven, Buscher said. Both drones are miniature helicopters.

Emergency landings during test flights are part of the landscape of the aerospace industry, Buscher said.

“It’s (crash) certainly not anything significant,” he said. “We do prototype testing regularly, and this was advanced testing, lower-level flights. This happens in the aerospace industry.

“The beautify of having something unmanned is you’re not putting any humans in harm’s way,” Buscher said.